


Cover Me With Salt Water

by Thistlerose



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Body Paint, F/M, Ficlet, Missing Scene, POV First Person, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-28
Updated: 2012-03-28
Packaged: 2017-11-02 14:59:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/370258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thistlerose/pseuds/Thistlerose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He can't change what she is fundamentally. (He wouldn't want to if he could.) But he can disguise her a little, if she likes.  Written for <a href="http://kolms.livejournal.com/18020.html">The Girl On Fire Fic-A-Thon</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cover Me With Salt Water

The only thing she says to me, after dropping her robe and twisting her hair out of the way is, “I just don’t want to be the Girl On Fire anymore. Don’t make me into her.”

As if Cinna and the rest of her prep squad actually changed her when she first got to the Capitol. As if she ever wasn’t the spark that lit all of us, that lit Panem and made it burn. Still, I ignore my red and gold paints, and reach instead for the cooler, more soothing colors: aqua and emerald green, deep indigo and soft lavender. The colors of twilight, or maybe of the ocean. How I always imagined the ocean, rather. Until our second arena – the one that was really a clock – I never saw big bodies of water, except on the screen.

She shivers when I touch her with the tip of my paintbrush. I glance down and see the gooseflesh on the backs of her pale arms. 

“Do you want me to … not?” The word _stop_ sticks in my throat because I haven’t really started.

She shakes her head. 

“Well … okay. But you’ll tell me if…?”

She nods, holding onto her hair, twisting it in her hands like it’s some kind of lifeline, and I swallow and continue.

I paint waves on her back, gentle waves to lap at her bruised and aching body. I paint them with broad strokes, giving them swirls and ripples, then flecking them with white, lacy foam. I paint what’s below the surface, or what I imagine is below it: long, mysterious shadows, glints from sunken treasures. I remember the pearl I gave her on the beach in the arena, and wish that I could capture its shimmer.

While I paint, Katniss just sits there on the edge of the tub. She doesn’t make a sound; I only know she’s breathing because of the shallow rise and fall of her back. 

I wish she would say something. When it’s too quiet, I start to imagine we’re not really alone, that we’re being watched or judged by millions of people. I can almost hear their voices, and I tell myself _Not real, not real_. It’s suffocating, the silence.

And yet, I can’t break it. I’m not brave like I used to be, if I ever really was. I can’t tell her how I feel, or press a kiss into the little hollow at the base of her skull. 

At least she lets me hold her sometimes, when the nightmares become too horrible. And sometimes she puts her arms around me and holds me until the world falls away and the words _This is real,_ this _is real_ whirl and explode in my head like fireworks.

At least she lets me do this: paint oceans and gems and rainbow fish scales on her back, disguising her, soothing but not quenching the fire that she is.

3/27/12


End file.
